22-25 June 2021
7-11am Pacific Time
How do magnetic fields affect the evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM), and in particular star formation? Recent observations on many scales, both in photometry and polarization, indicate that the dense ISM is filamentary in nature, from sub-structures in giant molecular clouds to the mysterious snake-like infrared dark clouds stretching for tens to hundreds of parsecs along the Galactic plane. To what extent is this filamentary structure driven by magnetic forces and where in the transition from kilo-parsecs scales to molecular cloud scales does it arise? With the availability of the HAWC+ instrument on SOFIA and the SCUBA-2/POL-2 instrument on the JCMT/EAO we are now able to resolve some of the large-scale structures seen in e.g. the Planck maps of the Galaxy, and connect them to the high-resolution, narrow field view of ALMA, and address these questions.
This online workshop will provide a forum to exchange insights and views on recent polarimetric observations, numerical simulations and advances in theoretical understanding, in an attempt to identify observable markers of the impact of magnetic fields. We are also dedicating a day to the question of turning polarimetric observations into magnetic field measurements, including the use and limitations of the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, the role of dust grain alignment in different environments, and the combination of line-of-sight and plane-of-the-sky tracers of the magnetic field.
This workshop is presented in partnership with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope
The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics; the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute; Center for Astronomical Mega-Science (as well as the National Key R&D Program of China with No. 2017YFA0402700). Additional funding support is provided by the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom and participating universities and organizations in the United Kingdom and Canada.
Invited Speakers
Terry Jones (U. Minnesota)
Mordecai-Mark Mac Low (AMNH)
Thomas Troland (University of Kentucky)
Martin Houde (Western University)
Brandon Hensley (Princeton University)
Che-Yu Chen (LLNL)
Patrick Hennebelle (CEA)
Kate Pattle (NUI)
Mika Juvela (University of Helsinki)
Stefan Reissl (University of Heidelberg)
Sarah Sadavoy (Queen's University)
Juan Diego Soler (MPIA)
Thushara Pillai (Boston University)
Dan Clemens (Boston University)
Christoph Federrath (ANU)
Alex Lazarian (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Science Organizing Committee
Arielle Moullet (SOFIA/USRA)
Ian Stephens (Worcester State)
Rowan Smith (Manchester)
Sebastian Wolf (Kiel)
Gabriel Franco (Belo Horizonte Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Mark Rawlings (JCMT)
B-G Andersson (SOFIA/USRA)
Jim Jackson (SOFIA/USRA)
Simon Coudé (SOFIA/USRA)